Review by: Slantedlight
Review
This is a bit of a strange zine, in my humble opinion... There are 204 pages,
most of them containing stories with some sort of BDSM kink, which I'm generally
all for, except...
I'm not sure that the authors of these stories really get BDSM, the
whole psychology of desire, the whole point of it, because I came away
from most of them fairly cold - or at the very best wonder wtf..?
Maybe the most "famous" (notorious?) of these stories is "The
Motorcycle Gang That Tried to Eat Brighton, And the Valiant CI5 Agents Who Stopped
Them" At first glance I thought this was bound to be some kind of comedy-fic,
or at least a pastiche, but... it really doesn't seem to be. The premise is
interesting enough - a gay biker gang with a penchant for BDSM terrorising Brighton
(very a la Mad Max I thought at first), but ...again with the but.
Bodie and Doyle are also not only gay but into BDSM, and they set up the bikers
in various ways to make their cover of Bodie as dom and Doyle as sub seem realistic.
On paper, in the words that you read, they enjoy themselves on the way, but...
the sex scenes come across as incredibly mechanical, and despite the various
explanations that the lads give each other for liking BDSM, and to justify what
they're doing, they all seem to culminate in "Bodie put it in Doyle until
they both came and then they went and had some dinner". Almost in those
words - there's no passion there that I could see at all, let alone
any kind of understanding of the darker, seamier sides of sexuality. I was given
a similar impression by "The Acronym" series of stories, by the same
author in this zine. And the lads are about as English as the American flag,
as well as very strangely (for me) characterised. Much talking, much explanation,
and much beating of chests and agonising - as well as some very odd
ideas about how to get over being violently gang-raped...
"If It's Done For Love Then It Can't Be Wrong", despite the ponderous
title, wasn't as mechanical at least and gave Bodie a fairly rarely-written
kink (!), although there was a little too much gushing at the end for me (sorry,
really didn't intend that pun... *g*). "Peaches and Cream" and "Stakeout"
by Tauna were both good - but both are available at
the online Circuit Archive, so there's no reason to get hold of the zine
to read them. Two other stories were rather sentimental for my taste - and one,
bizarrely enough, was a death fic, which just seemed out of place with all the
kinky sex going on elsewhere!
There are some illustrations - the fab and playful "The Stakeout Was Called
Off" by Suzanne Lovett, which can also be seen online, and then various
computer-generated images, which are effective but wouldn't justify my spending
money on the zine.
I'm glad I read it - if nothing else to see what all the fuss was about re:
"The Motorcycle Gang..." but for the vast majority of pages the lads
were just way too American (another big turn off for me - they're not!)
and both unrecognisable and fairly unsexy... It was a bit like eating muktuk,
or snails - I'm glad I tried it once for the experience, but I can't imagine
that it's something that'll go down well for most people...
Slantedlight, July 2008